Psychological Insights Into Twitter

Today’s article in Psy Blog is an excellent summary of psychological insights into Twitter users.

Twitter is still growing rapidly and users send more than 65 million “tweets” per day – a number that represents significant year-over-year growth from 2009.

Here are some of the most succinct, high-level findings from their article.

People join Twitter mostly to follow their friends. Following celebrities and others is a secondary thing.

Twitter is much less conversational and more like a game of CB radio where people take turns broadcasting their message and then replying or responding to others’ messages.

The stereotypes are true – a significant number of tweets are conversational or babble. This may include social pleasantries, public conversations, etc.

Average Twitter user is 31 year old.

Gender Differences: Men tend to have 15% more followers than women. Men and women tweet at about the same rate.

Some researchers classify twitter users are “meformers” (sending out mostly info about themselves) or “informers” (sharing information and replying to other users. According to this typology 80% are “Me-Formers” and 20% are “In-formers.” This reiterates the point above about Twitter not being the “dialogue” that some have made it out to be. It’s more of a public sharing of information than a true dialogue.